Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-11-27
CLEANS OF sheet light

scared by the red CLEANS OF sheet light
nlng-for it was weird night indeed.
/ Was that the scraping, the whine OF thu
terrier Bingo? No, it was but the wind
always the wind
Long before the laggiag eutumnal sur
had flushed with rucdy dawn The wild,
DARK sky, Melauie was 10 snd about, hu,
mad no hesrt for her daily tasks. Hell
morning pensioners, the little birds
pecked forgotten sgsiDst the window
panes for the crumbs she was wont to
! spread there for them regularly, and her
white lace and tremulous hands and limbs
! evinced 60 Bethia the terrible SUSPENSE Of
! the night and morning.
The psst day had been one of long and
Keen excitement to melsnle Talbot. There
! vas the episode OF the Cespatch- box, snd
! the use for which 1t had baen too evident
| ~ adopted; there was Lonsdale's letter
casting SO much lurid light on what hsd
! been so long an astonishing mystery; her
protracted visit TO her chief frieDds at
the vicarage; and lastly, her dreadful
anxiety ABOUT Dick, consigned an infant
to her care on their mothers death-bed,
when she herself was but child.
Utter prostration and WEAKNESS hsd
certainly made the poor girls eyes close
for few minutes, and then, with start,
she had become more wabeful than ever.
Had DtcR come home during the brief in
| taryal and stolen softly to his room?
Thrice she went thither in the grey dawn,
to find the chamber empty and his Ded
unslept in.
She thought that If aught serious had
occurred 10 Dick his terrier would have
returned; but Rethia reminded her how
often dogs had remained beside their mas
ter, even when the latter-but no! She
thrust aside the thought of peril, or.
worse, as too horrible for adoption or
contemplation.
DICK was certainly gone; but souvenirs
OF him remained on every hand, particu-
larry his sOiled ana tattered schooloookg,
in many instances with pencilled cartoons
OF Uncle Grimshsw on the fy-leaves, his
ptnceDez and side-tuff5 appearing con-
spicuOusly therein.
She knew that Dick was penniless, and
IS the day stole slowly on she looked
Wistfully at the table when it was set out
for each meal, her heart aching as she
thought Ct her boy and where, when, or
by whom his necessary wants were being
supplied, if at sll, for he might be hungry,
faint and furnishing, while, with sll their1
household frugality, there was food
enough, and to spare, st Rose Cottage.
The last depressing days, we have ssid,
OF dreary English autumn were passing
then, and winter WAS pigh-the DAYS that |
seem, according TO brilliant English |
preschers, to be pressge OF death, when |
the winter has actually come. "The days |
are short and the nights long, the sun is |
low and the lights are dim, the fruit is
gathered and the earth is st rest, the |
the trees are bare and lift their stripped |
arms like the bones Of death, and every
thing seems preaching to Us Of death"
80 the night began TO close again.
Where had that poor boy gone, out into
the cold, bleak world? she asked htrself
sgain and again.
He would come back-he must come
back. For second nigat Melanie did not
1Ddress, but Icy on her bed waiting and
alternately at door and window
til the gusty autumnal night stole away,
and she knew nothing, had learned moth
ing, out that her loving boy brother had
fed from his comfortiess home, with 6
.Ore and bitter heart.
"Oh, what can have hsppened?" she
;ried, as she wru1g her interlaced fi1gers
together.
Something must have happened,"
Vas the consolation offered by old Beths
3arlow, who had heard the tick of the
Death watch, Of course, and seen robin
leat its little breast against the window
IS she went to bed.
To Be Continued Nert Veek.1